At a meeting of the Security Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, Iwaya showed a positive stance on the use of the NATO scale for disclosing Japan's defense budgets, mainly to other countries.

Japan calculates its defense budgets by summing up only expenditures managed by the Defense Ministry, such as costs to procure defense equipment and salaries of Self-Defense Forces personnel.

The government has said that Japan's defense budget for fiscal 2019, which started in April, stands at 0.929 pct of its GDP.

Under the standards adopted by NATO members, they include such outlays as military pensions, expenditures related to U.N. peacekeeping operations and coast guard budgets into their defense budgets.